At Assertible, we've taken a unique approach with a web-serviced based
architecture that closely models real-world APIs and web
apps. This has several advantages in how you can represent your
tests, endpoints and more. We're excited to release a new feature made
possible by this unique approach: configurable rate limiting for
web services.

The rate limit setting lets you control how many requests per second
will hit your web service. Many APIs and web apps have built-in
request throttling to prevent rogue users from pounding the
servers. When your setting up automated API tests and monitoring, it's
convenient to be able to model this effectively, which is now
supported through the rate limit setting.

How Rate Limit works

The Rate Limit setting represents the maximum number of requests
per second that will hit your server. When your tests are run, like
via a Schedule
or Deployment, this rate limit will be used
to throttle how fast the HTTP requests are sent to your service.

The default Rate Limit is 15 requests/s. This is generally a good
starting point for most services, but you
can
configure this setting
to your specific use-case.

Requests are throttled per run ID. In other words, if two
schedules run at the same time, they will be throttled independently
since they are in two separate run IDs.

The Rate Limit will be applied to any dynamic requests as well - for
example, setup steps
and
link checker assertions
will be throttled within a test run. One great side-effect of
configuring a Rate Limit is that it reduces flaky API tests and 429 -
Too many requests errors many HTTP services return.

Configuring Rate Limit for your web service

Rate Limit can be configured on the Settings tab of any web
service, in the Service settings area:

The setting can be a number from 1 to 1000 and will control the
number of requests that will hit your web service. The default value
is 15 requests/s, which is a good middle-ground for most web
services.

Set your Rate Limit to a number that works with your API and run your
tests! You should notice with lower numbers, test runs take longer,
and with higher numbers they're faster.

Future development

We're excited to continue building more API testing and monitoring
features, and with our service-based architecture there are many
cool improvements on the horizon. This new feature is available today
for all accounts. To get started, check out
the documentation for web services.